Week of 6 Epiphany: Thursday, Year 1

Above:  Saint Peter

Messiah 101

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

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Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints (2010), of The Episcopal Church, contains an adapted two-years weekday lectionary for the Epiphany and Ordinary Time seasons from the Anglican Church of Canada.  I invite you to follow it with me.

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Genesis 9:1-17 (Revised English Bible):

God blessed Noah and his sons; he said to them,

Be fruitful and increase in numbers, and fill the earth.  Fear and dread of you will come on all the animals on earth, on all the birds of the air, on everything that moves on the ground, and on all fish in the sea; they are made subject to you.  Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; I give them all to you, as I have given you every green plant.  But you must never eat flesh with its life still in it, that is the blood.  And further, for your life-blood I shall demand satisfaction; from every animal I shall require it, and from human beings also I shall require satisfaction for the death of their fellows.

“Anyone who sheds human blood,

for that human being his blood will be shed;

because in the image of God

has God made human beings.”

Be fruitful, then, and increase in number; people the earth and rule over it.

God said to Noah and his sons:

I am now establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, all birds and cattle, all the animals with you on earth, all that have come out of the ark.  I shall sustain my covenant with you:  never again will all living creatures be destroyed by the waters of a flood, never again will there be a flood to lay waste the earth.

God said,

For all generations to come, this is the sign which I am giving of the covenant between myself and you and all living creatures with you:

my bow I set in the clouds

to be a sign of the covenant

between myself and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth,

the rainbow will appear in the clouds.

Then I shall remember the covenant which I have made with you and all living creatures, and never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all creation.  Whenever the bow appears in the cloud, I shall see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and living creatures of every kind on earth.

So God said to Noah,

This is the sign of the covenant which I have established with all that lives on earth.

Psalm 102:15-22 (1979 Book of Common Prayer):

15 The nations shall fear your Name, O LORD,

and all the kings of the earth your glory.

16 For the LORD will build up Zion,

and his glory will appear.

17 He will look with favor on the prayer of the homeless;

he will not despise their plea.

18 Let this be written for a future generation,

so that a people yet unborn may praise the LORD.

19 For the LORD looked down from his holy place on high;

from the heavens he beheld the earth;

20 That he might hear the groan of the captive

and set free those condemned to die;

21 That they may declare in Zion the Name of the LORD,

and his praise in Jerusalem;

22 When the peoples are gathered together,

and the kingdoms also, to serve the LORD.

Mark 8:27-33 (Revised English Bible):

Jesus and his disciples set out for the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples,

Who do people say that I am?

They answered,

Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, others one of the prophets.

He asked,

And you, who do you say that I am?

Peter replied,

You are the Messiah.

Then he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about him; and he began to teach them that the Son of Man had to endure great suffering, and to be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes; to be put to death, and to rise again three days afterwards.  He spoke about it plainly.  At this Peter took hold of him and began to rebuke him.  But Jesus, turning and looking at his disciples, rebuked Peter.

Out of my sight, Satan!

he said.

You think as men think, not as God thinks.

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The Collect:

O  God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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In the Southern United States, my native region, we have a saying:  “God bless him (or her).”  I apply this to Simon Peter.  “God bless him.”

The author of the Gospel of Mark states of Jesus that “He spoke about it plainly.”  “It” refers to his impending arrest, torture, execution, and resurrection.  Recall that Jesus had spoken of another matter in metaphors just a few verses before, and the Apostles did understand then.  Now, that our Lord and Savior has laid metaphors aside and begun to use plain Aramaic, the Apostles are just as dense.  They hear his words, but they do not like them.  “Surely Jesus cannot mean this, can he?  No, this cannot be.”  This is my paraphrase of what Apostles, namely Peter, must have thought.

The prevailing concept of Messiahship was that the Messiah would be the conquering hero who would expel the Roman occupiers.  This is understandable; who likes to live in his or her home, under foreign domination?  One of the messages in the Gospel of Mark is this:  The role of the Messiah is not to conquer, but to suffer, die, and rise again.  This is Messiah 101.

God does not think as we do, so attempting to follow God carries the risk of getting it wrong.  This was Peter’s situation, “God bless him.”  Yet consider what he became.  How is that for grace?

God is gracious, as the reading from Genesis makes plain.  God establishes a covenant with people and does not require anything of us; this is about what God will do and will not do.  God will be gracious to us, and the symbol (because we like visuals) is a rainbow.  Professor Richard Elliott Friedman quotes Rabbi Martin Lawson regarding this sign:  The rainbow symbolizes the covenant with Noah because it is “a bow pointed away from the earth.”  The origin of the name rainbow in English and Hebrew derives from the fact that the rainbow has the same shape as a bow used to shoot arrows.  The arrows are pointed away from earth.

The presence of Jesus on the earth is likewise an indication of grace.  God is on our side.  Are we on God’s side? (God bless us.)

KRT